T. and I have been experimenting, since discovering various canned meats in the grocery store, with variations on tuna-noodle casserole.

Growing up, my mom & grandma called this Toodles and Noodles, and we always omitted the breadcrumbs and sometimes the peas. It is, at its base, a pantry staple: a can of soup, half a bag of egg noodles, and a can of tuna fish, and you have a meal.

It’s served T. & I well over the years (I usually add panko to the top, and we almost always add the frozen peas).

Canned chicken + cream of chicken soup worked pretty well. It was a bit one-note, but I think adding garlic would help with that. Choodles and noodles!

Spurred on by our success, and with a can of corned beef and a can of cream-of-mushroom-with-garlic soup, we moved on to try another casserole. Moodles and noodles! To this one we added sauteed onions and mushrooms, and got something sort of like a beef stroganoff.

I’m not sure what to try next. Tofu and noodles?

What about you? What are your go-to pantry meals? Any fun variations on the classics?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/456008.html. You can comment here or there.

I recently saw this quote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s664NsLeFM on a bumper sticker: Carl Sagan: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

It reminded me of the apocryphal recipe for rabbit stew that starts “first, catch the rabbit.” (link)

By Sagan’s standards, we did not make Saag Paneer from scratch. However, the paneer (cheese) was made from milk, buttermilk, and salt at home, and half the spinach and all the onions were grown in our own garden, so it does meet at least some standards for such (I wonder if one can can saag. I think you should be able to, with a pressure cooker)

It was, by the by, delicious. I’m going to to make more paneer soon. Assuming I still hae more cheesecloth.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/394669.html. You can comment here or there.